Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure, or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Inspirational anticipation quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
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Famous Anticipation Quotes
Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. – Alfred Hitchcock
People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind. – Eckhart Tolle
Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work’s important, family’s important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You’re cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what’s coming. – Nicholas Sparks
Happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory. – Julian Barnes
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing. – Samuel Smiles
Even if you walk exactly the same route each time – as with a sonnet – the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet’s health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same. – A. R. Ammons
Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization. – Amelia Earhart
Anticipation and Hope are born twins. – Rousseau
The anticipation of evil courts evil. Mme. – Deluzy
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. – George Eliot

The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself. – Herder
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering. – Quintilian
What need a man forestall his date of grief, and run to meet what he would most avoid? – Milton
I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery. – Schiller
Nothing is so great an adversary to those who make it their business to please as expectation. – Cicero
All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than expectation. – Feltham
We can but ill endure, among so many sad realities, to rob anticipation of its pleasant visions. – Henry Giles
There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it in expecting evil before it arrives? – Seneca
I would not anticipate the relish of any happiness, nor feel the weight of any misery, before it actually arrives. – Spectator
I am giddy; expectation whirls me ’round.The imaginary relish is so sweetThat it enchants my sense. – Shakespeare
A good restaurant just makes me giddy. I can go all day with anticipation just knowing where I’m going to eat. Sometimes it’s well planned, sometimes it’s spontaneous. Either way works.
We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment. – Henry Home
Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted. – Johnson
To despond is to be ungrateful beforehand. Be not looking for evil. Often, thou drainest the gall of fear while evil is passing by thy dwelling. – Tupper
With everyone, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul’s infinite. – Balzac
The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure. – La Bruyère
Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate. – Joan Jett
The problem is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing that such a thing shall be, it don’t help anything to the effecting of the thing. – Bacon
There are many things that are thorns to our hopes until we have attained them, and envenomed arrows to our hearts when we have. – Mirabeau
Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based. – Deepak Chopra
There would be few enterprises of great labor or hazard undertaken, if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages which we persuade ourselves to expect from them. – Johnson
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven, and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body. – Thomas Fuller
Things temporal are sweeter in the expectation, things eternal are sweeter in the fruition; the first shames thy hope, the second crowns it; it is a vain journey, whose end affords less pleasure than the way. – Quarles
A man’s desires always disappoint him; for though he meets with something that gives him satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers his expectation. – La Rochefoucauld
All fear is in itself painful, and when it conduces not to safety, is painful without use. Every consideration, therefore, by which groundless terrors may be removed adds something to human happiness. – Dr. Johnson
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first instance, we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, Nature cooks it for us. – Goldsmith
Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogant to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prognosticate miscarriages. – Dr. Johnson
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing. – Samuel Smiles
Motivational Anticipation Quotes
It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow’s burden is added to the burden of to-day that the weight is more than a man can bear. – George Macdonald
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other, it is our own. – Colton
The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remains a poor fisherman. We must at times trust something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens. – Metastasio
In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them, as he proposed to himself in the expectation. – South
In proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose. – Dr. Johnson
We are apt to rely upon future prospects and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are. – Addison
Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them. – Goldsmith
We sometimes emphasize the danger in a crisis without focusing on the opportunities that are there. – Al Gore
By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more. – Joseph Addison
Anticipation leads the way to victory and is the spur to conquest. – Nicolas Chamfort
The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting. – Andy Warhol
Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy. – Lao Tzu
Anticipation was the soul of enjoyment. – Elizabeth Gaskell
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it’s bad for the heart. – Stephen Joshua Sondheim
Anticipation – It’s a ticklish thing really, Quivering, exciting, waiting, Until it dies – Killed by its own self Lost through virtue of being there – Dal Perry
You loved ferris wheels more than roller coasters because life shouldn’t be lived at full speed, but in anticipation and appreciation. – Amy Harmon
Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them. – Lucy Maud Montgomery
Depression is the flaw in love. There’s no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss. And that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy. – Andrew Solomon
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting. – Samuel Johnson
We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive. – Albert Camus
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest and despair most fits. – William Shakespeare
It is expectation makes a blessing dear; heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were. – John Suckling
Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed, it is hope’s finest expression. – Steven L. Peck
Anticipating pain was like enduring it twice. Why not anticipate pleasure instead? – Robin Hobb
Anticipation is making me late; it’s keeping me waiting. – Carly Simon
Anticipation makes pleasure more intense. – Iris Johansen
When you expect things to happen – strangely enough – they do happen. – J. P. Morgan
Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are.
– Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Live with the anticipation that something incredible might happen at any time. – Sharon Gannon
Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing. – Patricia Highsmith
Expectation is the mother of all frustration. – Antonio Banderas
Wait for it, wait for it! Anticipation is half the fun, So I’ve been told… – Phil Collins
Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure. – Angela Carter
The excitement of anticipation was almost equal to the thrill of lovemaking … – John Irving
…The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present. – Baruch Spinoza
Never yield to gloomy anticipation. Place your hope and confidence in God. He has no record of failure. – Lettie Cowman
Anticipation is sometimes more exciting than actual events. – Ana Monnar
Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself. – Joanne Harris